French experience of regulation and operation on reprocessing facilities of LWR spent fuels

This presentation describes the French experience of regulation and operation on reprocessing facilities: how the safety assessment was made of UP3-A plant of the La Hague establishment for the building permit and operating license within the context of French nuclear regulations and the national debate on the need for reprocessing. Other factors discussed are how the public was involved, how the regulations were improved in the process and what the different stages of commissioning consisted of. In the design studies of a reprocessing facility, three complementary approaches are used: - observance of regulations born of technical considerations, and good practice, - analysis of the hazards, using deterministic and probabilistic methods, within the framework of a safety report, - review of experience feedback from such a facility or like plants. The design of the facility must permit the prevention of accidents and limit their consequences. Moreover, during all foreseeable cases (normal operating, incidents and accidents), the safety of the staff, the public and the environment with regard to consequences of radioactive releases and ionising radiations must be ensured. In the evaluation of these consequences, the approach used is voluntarily pessimistic in order to take into account every possible case. It is based on the main following principles: definition of the events considered for the dimensioning of the facility; redundancy and diversification; defense in depth which consists of the multiplication of the barriers. The experience feedback comes, on the one hand from operator's findings aiming at improving its facility, on the other hand from incidents, the lessons of which being taken into account after careful analysis. These incidents are analyzed by the Safety Authority upon presentation of the data by the operator and on site findings of inspections. In other respects, the aim of inspections is to check that the plant and its operating practices are conformable to the whole documents (reports and operating rules) analyzed during safety assessment. The procedure for commissioning of UP3-A reprocessing plant of the La Hague COGEMA establishment associates two approaches: a technical one, based on safety assessment of the facility (normal operating, incidents and accidents); an administrative one, involving to take the advice of the public, of the local authorities and of the competent ministries. The operator must demonstrate that the design is in agreement with the safety regulations. These regulations require compliance with the ALARA principle and limiting values for exposure of staff and public. In other respects, the operator studied all foreseeable incident and accident situations whose occurrence reduces the safety of the facility, the forerunner events originating inside the installations or being specific to the site. The ability of the systems to ensure a safety level satisfactory in all plausible circumstances has been validated using deterministic and (whenever probabilities can be calculated with adequate accuracy) probabilistic approaches. (author)